On the Strength of Information

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It is said that we have been living in an age of information technology. It is said that strength of information is enormous and armed with this weapon only the USA has overcome its shortcomings in her way to survival and supremacy over others. We share this views. We do not have the least doubt over it. It is a fact that the building up of one Tazmahal in the medieval India or one pyramid in the ancient Egypt could not have been possible without the necessary and proper knowledge received and developed by the people involved in the great jobs. Again the great Indian bards named Valmiki or Vedavyasa could not have been successful in writing the glorious epics of the Ramayan and the Mahabharata in the very old Vedic days without the accumulation of the large magnitude of information. Still we are worried and to narrate the reasons behind this these few lines are being submitted herein. By birth I am a Bengali and I belong to West Bengal the territory ornamented with the green thanks to the yearly great monsoons and the territory which has been blessed with the emergence of Tagore Rabindranath, the great bard of modern India.West Bengal has been ruled by a group of political parties popularly known as the left, actually the government here is being called as the leftfront government, who have occupied the chair of the authority with the support of the people privileged less or least. Forty or fifty years back they were avert to the introduction of automation and computerization in West Bengal so much so that they had successfully resisted the move by another political conglomeration who had been at the helm of power in this state at that time.They had pointed out different reasons including the apprehension of erosion in the job market. And to our utter surprise this political forces have been forcing the introduction of the information technology with all the might and have been trying to elbow out the contestants of the regions because they have discovered themselves to have seats in the back benches. This is the current features of the developing and underdeveloped third world whose rulers of different hues have been raising many a questions because of their many many hypocritical practices and much more exhibition of worthlessness. This people have suddenly discovered something new,it appears. And they have been claiming they will take the territories and definitely people generally cursed with poorer status to any new heaven or at least to its boundary with the strength of information technology. If it really happens we shall be equally glad and no less happy than anyone. Still we have something to ponder with. The fundamental thing in respect of information is that it is spread and it is spread without or with the endeavor of an agent. In our locality of beelined railway residences one morning a person in his regular mission of walking listens to some musical notes indicating that a young girl has been busy in the rehearsal and he will take it granted that the family holds a taste for music. Again one evening if one notices a few colored roses drawing his attention from the high terraces from one's house he will come to the conclusion that the house-owner is a lover of flower. And even if I find a hapless man lying dead one afternoon beside the railway bridge without being attended by any of his relatives or friends or even by anybody else, I feel something. Dear readers, in each cases we will realize that there was absolutely no agents who have any role in the spread of such information. But it is different when information is spread with some motive or target in mind in order to achieve something or in order to find some acts to be done and such other. We have been in the electronic age too and it is also an age of very powerful media movement. Advertisements are a great source of income in the business of the print and electronic media. Advertisement of different products and services are presented very smartly through the media -- soaps and shampoos, blades and after-savings, bikes and four-wheelers, educational institutions and job markets -- everything of human necessity are displayed visually and audio-visually through the electronic media, that is, through the hundreds of television channels round the clock. One may notice that the statements delivered in these advertisements are prepared in such a manner that we get allured instantly and we hardly fail to resist the bewitching call of the substances exhibited. This motivates us and creates in our mind a demand to have them and we in most of the times are unconsciously begin to consider that ownership of those commodities will only make us happy or happier although in regard to many of such substances it is true that we are in no way in need of them for our daily necessity. This creation of artificial or mechanical demand in our mind will lead us to be expensive even denying the limit of our actual capability. And the very first victim of this operation will be our habit of reading the daily newspaper and taking milk and this way different nutrients that keep our body fit and healthy. On the other hand, there is no doubt that the claim submitted on the covers of the commodities is not always unmixed with lies. Words are framed there in such a way that a customer even after the realization that he has been virtually deceived cannot move for the justice once or always. Most of the customers are socially not in a status that they will move although they are entitled to do this. In cases of the pharmaceuticals it has been experienced many a times by all of us. Medicines forbidden internationally by none other than the World Health Organization are being prescribed by many physicians in India and are being daily sold and very few of us are having any kind of ground-level knowledge of it and no effective opposition to this practices are being built up. If we pay attention to the political spectrum of different countries that are happy with the consideration that enough of democratic values have been nurtured and nourished in the society, at least in case of electing the people's representatives who will form the legislatures and finally the government, a sea of fallacies, and therefore, a heap of question will naturally emerge. If we take India for an example, as it is good to take India for consideration for much is being said nowadays on the achievement of this country in different spheres including that of democratic practices,we shall find many elements that easily dismiss the glorious claims. One can study India before any election period and it is really interesting. The entire country, thanks to the efforts and interests of the printing and electronic media and obviously to the extra endeavor of the state as a whole, will gradually be put into a net of substances only or specifically related to the election of the representatives of the people. This involves use of millions of tonnes of newsprint, unprecedented movement of the tireless television journalists, marching and posting of different streams of securities, race against time by the relentless politicians professional and non-professional, fury of the sound produced by the microphones generally violating scheduled and legal limit of decibels, complete one-way-business of the other government machineries and boundless promises and oaths publicly committed by the leaders of all parties and then endless mud-throwing between one contestant and the other and careful distribution of assistances and black money to different political parties by the great corporate houses with an eye to get a return of the investment in twice or trice in magnitude, and thus what not. In this process the most funny specter is that the voters who have been economically shattered by the rule of more than a half century after the exit of the British will have a few good days, good not in the sense that their plight will be taken into consideration or attempts will be taken to solve their age-old problems, but to the extent that some carrots will be placed in front of their noses at least. And there will be a sea-change even in the mind of these men and women ever deprived and ever deceived by the same faces and they will like the sheep run to the polling booth to elect the same leaders who have no other consideration in general except of their own welfare and prosperity. Even in the casting of votes these people are not at all important because sometimes they will learn appearing before the polling center that their votes have already been cast by somebody more responsible to any political party. Now the question is that in such affair the information has a role to play and it has played its role according to the terms and conditions of the environment prevailed in the surroundings. This leads to a definite deduction that information is a strength of the agent who is its owner indeed. And the issue of ownership is something different which I like to discuss next time please.